[Review] Royal Replicas

Monday, June 26, 2017

{SUMMARY}
"Princess Amelia is dead... and one of you will replace her."

Seventeen-year-old Victoria Sandalwood has served the Duke and Duchess all her life. Over the years, she’s learned to make due with what she has and endure her surrogate father’s awful punishments. She dreams of escape, but never expected it to come in the form of a message from the Queen of Westeria.

Victoria learns that she’s the Queen’s daughter, the younger sister to Princess Amelia, and it’s time to come home and claim her birthright. When she arrives, she discovers she’s not the only one who received the royal message.

Victoria must compete with six other girls to earn the affection of both the Queen and a princely suitor… and to replace the secretly deceased Princess Amelia. If she fails to win the crown, Victoria may just have to fight for her life…

Royal Replicas is the first book in a YA dystopian series. If you enjoy courtly intrigue, heart-pounding adventure, and sweet romance, then you’ll love this captivating story. Perfect for fans of Kiera Cass, Bella Forrest, and Veronica Roth.

The Selection meets Twilight (at least in my opinion).

WARNING: Spoiler alert

When I agreed to review this, I was moved by the summary. I was intrigued. Sure, the plot wasn't very unique considering what it reminded me of, but I still wanted to see what kind of adventure this would take me on. Let me start off by saying that I do not intend to be mean in the slightest; these are my opinions and thoughts that I had while reading the book.

First off, let me start off by asking; what is it with a man beating a child and the wife not doing anything about it and just apologizing for it? I don't get it. I don't like it.

Oh; and warning for graphic violence and potential hints to sexual abuse.

I absolutely loathe the whole somewhat "love triangle" thing happening. If I lost all memory of this one person, I wouldn't be pining after them regardless of how much they knew about me. That would just make me want to at least get to know them better -- not kiss them and talk about how much I think about them. They're still a stranger. Period. All this back and forth love-kiss crap is so annoying it's insane.

You would think that if someone, while you're trying to escape, said that they think they saw someone several times, you'd be more concerned. Why aren't they more concerned? This deeply affects the realism and takes away a lot from the story.

To make matters worse, the book brought up Twilight? Really? I hated that series with a passion; sorry Twihards, but it was terribly written and I prefer my old fashioned vampires over sparkly fairies and cursed bipedal werewolves over … gigantic normal wolves. On top of that, the "love" in that is just as bad and I finally understand:

This book was inspired by Twilight in a way. With Edward being the Prince and Jacob being Kale. Gag. No wonder I hate that whole "love" crap going on between them. Sorry, but not for me.

Now for the plot twist. Yes, there's a plot twist and holy poop. Okay, I'm going to be honest, I didn't expect it and it was a pleasant surprise for sure. Pretty well done.

The ending was unsatisfactory to me. I don't know. I feel like I was supposed to want to read more, that I should have been upset that it ended, but the fact is, to me, it was a drab ending and I just can't accept it.

Overall, as you can tell, I didn't really like it. The plot had a lot going for it, but the execution was poor. The Twilight-esque of the romantic interests, the poor decisions… it just wasn't doing anything for me. The romanticism was poor and annoying. I hated the way she treated the both of them and the fact that they kept pining after her. I hated the way she see-sawed through both of them and didn't really seem to care too much how much she hurt them with her decisions. She was reckless and downright infuriating. Would I consider reading the next book? Certainly, but only because I want to know what ends up happening. I've started a series and I'm the type of person that needs to finish it.

No problem at all! I mean, there's no vampires... I just compared it to Twilight because of that dreaded love complication thing going on. To me, it was just as appalling as Twilight's Edward/Bella/Jacob thing that went on in there. It honestly would have been amazing if that wasn't such an eye roll and if the character was bearable to read. People said she was strong in other reviews, but I saw her as weak and naive.